


Falling Apart Into My Arms

by MeinongsJungleBook



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Angst, Bad Romance, Drama, Implied robot sex, Other, grey morality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 17:14:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15823380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeinongsJungleBook/pseuds/MeinongsJungleBook
Summary: Windblade struggles to cope after making a morally difficult choice; Starscream tries to help her.





	Falling Apart Into My Arms

**Author's Note:**

> For Windscream Week Day 3 - Angst

Honestly, if anything, Starscream was in a good mood.

They had neutralised a significant threat and saved millions of lives in the long term, and all it had cost was a little over a hundred lives in the present and the burden of one more secret to keep under wraps. Starscream could drink to that.

Windblade, of course, saw things differently. This wasn’t the first dirty secret that they shared, but it was the first time that she was directly responsible for the death of “innocents”, and she was not taking it well. There really hadn’t been any other way, and they had certainly very thoroughly explored all the options before realising that the best possible outcome would still require a sacrifice, and even then it had taken a lot of convincing from him to get her to go through with it. He saw her crumple to the ground immediately after it was done, trembling as she hugged herself, and he thought that perhaps he should say something, though he didn’t know what. He didn’t get the opportunity anyway, because she suddenly scrambled to her feet and hurried wordlessly out the room, and honestly he was relieved.

Over the next couple of days he watched her struggle under the weight of the secret, her optics dull, her wings drooped, the few smiles she managed painfully forced. She was just good enough a liar that to an untrained optic this could pass for exhaustion, but even if he wasn’t in on the secret Starscream would have been able to recognise that something was very wrong. He only saw her when they were required to be in the same room for work, where she avoided speaking to or even looking in his direction when she could, and outside of these events she avoided him altogether.

However, one night Starscream heard the chime of his apartment door sounding, and on his security monitor he saw Windblade waiting on the other side. When the door slid open he found her wearing an expression of forced neutrality that almost immediately crumbled into utter distress when she saw him.

“I can’t…I can’t keep going like this. I just need to…I don’t know. I need to talk to someone. I-I… _please_ ,” she said desperately, and Starscream wordlessly stepped aside to let her pass into his apartment.

She sank down onto a chair and held her head in her hands, her body hunched and wings low, “What have I become? How can anyone live like this? I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want to…I can’t take it back,” her voice cracked and wings trembled.

Starscream shuffled awkwardly, and figured that now was the time when he would have to say something, “I know from experience that the more you do these sorts of things, the easier it gets,” he offered.

Starscream realised that was evidently not the right thing to say when Windblade broke down into wracking sobs. This was really outside his realm of expertise; the vast majority of Decepticons wouldn’t dare display this sort of emotional vulnerability, especially not in front of _him_ , and they’d all left behind whatever qualms they had about necessary killing a long time ago. Starscream had become particularly practiced at putting those sorts of misgivings aside over the millennia, but seeing how distressed it made Windblade managed to make shadows of them stir, and he really didn’t like it. He also didn’t like seeing her upset for its own sake – there was a time when he might have taken a sort of pleasure in her anguish, seizing upon it as a weakness he could exploit, but not anymore.

As desensitised as they had become to killing, and as frowned upon as it was to display emotional vulnerability in their culture, it wasn’t as though Decepticons were strangers to crushing emotional pain. The war had been a horror show that had been central to their existence for what might as well have been an eternity, and pain and loss in all their varieties had become deeply familiar friends. But they had their ways of dealing with it. Their distractions. He could share that with her.

He seized her by the shoulders and pulled her into a rough kiss. He couldn’t take back what she’d done for her, but he could offer her pleasure – and pain, if she so desired it – to push aside her thoughts about it, if only for a while. And yes, he did want this for himself as well; he’d been thinking about her in this way more and more lately, and now that she knew how it felt to bear the weight of death, perhaps they could know each other more intimately than ever. But ultimately, he was doing this because he wanted to soothe her distress.

Windblade, however, did not seem to appreciate it, “What the frag do you think you’re doing?!” she screamed, pulling herself away from him.

Starscream cupped her face and said with uncharacteristic earnestness, “I know how it feels, I know how to make it feel better. Let me do this for you.”

Windblade threw his hands off her in disgust. “Don’t ever touch me again,” she snarled.

Starscream didn’t say anything as he watched her storm out, and once she had left he collapsed into a seat, poured himself a glass of engex, and drank it in silence as he stared out at the city through the window.

Hours later he had almost managed to fall into recharge when he heard a chime at his door. He opened it to find Windblade standing there, before she flung herself at him and kissed him desperately. Starscream returned the kiss with the same desperation, and pulled her inside. He felt a blissful warmth in his spark knowing that Windblade had realised what he had needed her to understand: that the only place a monster could find solace and understanding was in the arms of another monster.


End file.
